NYU Professor: Save World From Global Warming By Genetically Modifying Humans To Make Us Smaller, Use Drugs To Make People Allergic To Meat

Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing humankind, and as the stakes are raised, many are proposing ambitious solutions — from pumping dust into the atmosphere to escaping to space.

But what if instead of trying to fix the world, we fixed ourselves? That’s the question posed by Matthew Liao, director of the Bioethics Programme at New York University, and his colleagues. “We tried to think outside the box,” says Liao. “What hasn’t been suggested with respect to addressing climate change?”

The answer they landed on is human engineering: the biomedical modification of human beings to reduce their impact on the environment. The associate professor suggests that by changing our underlying biology — altering our size or diet, for instance — we could create greener humans. […]

One strategy would be to reduce our resource use. “18% of greenhouse emissions come from livestock farming, so if we ate less meat we could greatly reduce our environmental impact,” explains Liao. But although most people understand that eating meat is not environmentally friendly, the sight of a juicy steak sizzling on the grill is often too tempting to refuse. But what if we could engineer people to dislike the taste of burgers?

“We can artificially induce intolerance to red meat by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins,” he says. Liao envisions a medical aid like a nicotine patch that makes you sick if you try to eat red meat. Such a patch might sound like science fiction — and for now it is — but evidence has recently surfaced that people bitten by the lone star tick, native to the southern US, subsequently developedallergies to red meat, forcibly pushing them toward a vegetarian lifestyle.

Liao also argues that we can reduce the size of our environmental footprint by reducing the size of our physical footprint. “Reducing height by 15cm would mean a reduction in mass of around 25%,” says Liao. That’s a quarter less of you that has to be transported, fed, and watered. Although there’s a social stigma against being short, Liao counters that there are benefits too. Smaller people tend to live longer he says, “and you can fit in airplanes better!”

Duane Lester

Duane Lester is co-founder of All American Blogger, and the primary writer. Following graduation, Duane entered the United States Navy as a journalist. He spent five years touring the world, reporting on local news and sports. Following his enlistment, Duane spent almost 10 years working with adjudicated youth in residential treatment environments.
Duane discovered politics after September 11. He credits Erich "Mancow" Muller for opening his eyes to his conservative beliefs. Since then, Duane has devoured books and literature on politics, reading everything he can from Adam Smith to Larry Elder to Thomas Sowell. He refers to his style of politics as "conserva-tarian", a mixture of conservative and libertarian beliefs.